Remember when the Star Wars prequels were still a rumor? Those were happier times. Before “Annie” Skywalker, before Jar-Jar, before…

Anyway, back then, there was a constant debate about those prequels. Were they real? Really really real? Would George Lucas truly grace us with more Star Wars to feed our greasy nerd habits? Yes, child, yes.

Of course, the end result turned out rather disappointing, but at least we had that time of blissful anticipation.

Now, we have The Hobbit.

When The Lord of the Rings first went into production, every fan on the planet began speculating about The Hobbit. The much more childish prequel to Tolkien’s LOTR, it’s the story of Frodo’s uncle Bilbo as a much younger hobbit and his amazing adventures with a posse of dwarves and a dragon. Much of the mythology is barely touched upon in The Hobbit, and elves are portrayed as quite evil. It presents some continuity problems with the rest of the series, plus Ian Holm is getting really old.

Apparently, that’s not a problem.

Talk of a Hobbit movie first began some months ago, but when New Line Cinema failed to fulfill its deal with Peter Jackson, he decided to take his Hobbit script and go home. This ultimately led to the firing of the two studio heads by Time Warner, which many believed was long overdue…but it didn’t answer any questions about The Hobbit.

A temporary cease-fire between Jackson and New Line means that they’ll be releasing The Hobbit after all, it seems. But Jackson won’t direct - though he remains in control of the project, both Hobbit films - yes, there are two now - will be directed by Hellboy’s Guillermo del Toro.

Of course, this is means that those of us (like me) who hoped for a del Toro Harry Potter movie are probably out of luck. Nothing has been set in stone, but it’s been verbally confirmed by several reliable sources at Sundance, so it looks like del Toro is in.

Now sing along!

The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far away the road has gone
And I must follow if I can…

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